Letters to the editor: Make gun-safety classes mandatory

People own guns for hunting, self-defense, target shooting, in case governments become too oppressive, and to kill people and/or themselves when their mental wires short-circuit.

The first four scenarios are legitimate reasons to own a gun; the last one is beyond all reason. When people go off the deep end and act irrationally, it usually takes counseling to bring them back to reality. But it is difficult to counsel someone while he or she is shooting bullets at you.

What can be done? We are not a police state. We do not wish to take guns from everyone and we can't logistically monitor every citizen's mental state on a daily basis. We do have gun laws that are mostly enforced after the criminal activity has taken place. Since we believe that you are innocent until proven guilty, that is the way it is and the way it should be.

What we may do is establish a gun safety law, a law that would require all gun owners to take a gun safety course. The course curriculum would entail respect for guns, their legitimate uses, how to handle them safely and, most importantly, how to safeguard them from everyone but the gun owner. If all guns were under lock and key or safeguarded with trigger locks, many unnecessary gun deaths would be thwarted.

It is my hope that if we educate people on gun safety, as we do with prospective Pennsylvania hunters, we could instill the idea that the misuse or careless handling of firearms, or mixing the use of firearms with drugs or alcohol, can bring sorrow to many families and friends.

Kevin Barwin|Erie

Guns, suicides

linked in U.S.

One of the conclusions reached by Andrew Solomon, author of the book "Far From the Tree," after extensive research into the massacres that have occurred in the U.S., including interviews with families such as those of Dylan Klebold (a perpetrator of the Columbine massacre in 1999), is that knowing everything about the perpetrator, the shooter's family, social experiences and the world he inhabits does not answer the question "why" in any way that will solve the problem.

If, however, we look at the problem from another perspective, the issue becomes clearer and possibly more effectively addressable. We need to look at suicide. To understand murder-suicide, one has to start with the suicide, as that is the engine of such attacks.

Solomon states, "The United States is the only country in the world where the primary means of suicide is guns. In 2010, 19,392 Americans killed themselves with guns; that's twice the number of people murdered by guns that year. Historically the states with the weakest gun laws have had substantially higher suicide rates than those with the strongest laws. Someone who has to look for a gun often has time to think better of using it, while someone who can grab one in a moment of passion cannot."

We are living in a violent, competitive, corporate-driven society that tends to generate conditions with which some of us, particularly adolescent males, are unable to cope. Changing these conditions will inevitably benefit everyone everywhere, but until that happens, we are desperately in need of, among other things, effective gun legislation.

Lee Forrest|Girard

'Real man' offers

lessons on guns

While living in Florida, I met a guy I could help with his estate planning. He had a bunch of stuff that I explained would have to be valuated for state and federal tax purposes, including a dozen or so antique automobiles in various stages of rebirth.

He was a colorful man with a huge mustache, cowboy boots, clothes and demeanor of a guy in charge. He invited me to have lunch and I was escorted to his basement. People do not have basements in Florida, because the state is made of sand. Yet this guy did.

I have never seen a room so huge. It had two pool tables, a poker table, a pingpong table, sand bowling and more arcade machines than most amusement rooms with room to spare. The upper walls were decorated with every kind of horned animal. This was a serious room by a serious guy. There was even a stuffed 12-foot alligator he killed.

But what caught my attention the most was the room was filled with guns. All four walls were lined with guns, rifles, shotguns and handguns of all sorts. The room literally had a thousand firearms.

As a person who had never been around firearms, I was stultified, so I asked him about the weapons.

He told me he was a building contractor and during his 50 years in the business he had hired many people and those people would come and go. Most of them lived paycheck to paycheck and many would ask for a loan that he would gladly grant. But he wanted collateral, for which he would accept a firearm.

He told me, "I wanted to make sure that on the day when they were having a hard time they did not have a firearm nearby."

I knew on that day I had met a real man.

Jack D. Blank|Erie

We all must join

fight against hate

During the colonization of our continent when settlers were beset with problems they didn't understand or couldn't control, they would sometimes blame their own for those problems, accuse them of witchcraft and execute them.

Which makes one think of our current problems of violence. Our leaders blame guns. Perhaps we need gun control. Maybe as an individual it is a more complicated question than any of us can answer. But if we remove all guns, will it remove the hate that claimed the lives of the 28 in New England?

If guns of all kinds are outlawed, would hate, jealousy, greed, fear and every other reason why humans kill one another be removed? Maybe our responsibility to our fellow man is much more involved than taking away things we can harm ourselves with.

Maybe gun violence is a symptom of other problems. Maybe we should all confront the real things in this world that leave our children dead in their schools and streets. Instead of being absorbed in our own problems, cell phones, careers, etc., we should all be thinking of one another, and those among us now. Fight the hate, jealousy, greed, and fear in this world with hope, faith, confidence, generosity and understanding. Genuinely care about everyone you meet. We need to start caring and getting involved with one another now, not after tragedies. When we ask someone how they are doing, really mean it.

Starting with one mother and one father, one family, one neighborhood, one school, one church, one community, caring and getting involved and mattering to one another may be a good start.

Beware when our leaders give simple answers to complicated questions like gun violence. Like many things, it is a problem all of us should be involved in solving. Our leaders cannot pave roads or protect the borders; it doesn't matter what they ban. It is up to us to reaffirm the preciousness of life among all of ourselves.